Actually, when others are described to be nihilists in accounts today the focus is either on the fierce means they employ in pursuit of one or another “kingdom of ends”, or because their views are such as to actually be an attack on one’s own.
I can’t recall a single reference to nihilism in the media these days that comes even close to my own entirely existential assessment.
Defined? Right. As though a thoroughly comprehensive definition can in fact be concocted and made applicable to a world as phenomenally complex and convoluted as to include, among other things, the “human condition”.
In any event, you know where I insist that any definitions “thought up” here must go. Not only out into the world of human interactions but made germane to an actual set of circumstances where the word nihilism might reasonably come up. When, for example, making a distinction between meaning derived from the either/or world or meaning derived from, well, take a wild guess.
Again, not my own rendition. Not an assessment derived from daseins confronting conflicting goods in a world ever and always embedded in political economy.
I challenge any Nietzschean here to explore that with me “in a particular context”.
As for the epistemological, ethical and metaphysical components of nihilism…how far from the domain of the “serious philosopher” will he go?
Again and again and again: here, in my view, we can only go back to what must surely be an enormous gap between what each of us as individuals think we know [about anything] and all that there is to be known given the perspective of some entity [which most call God] privy to comprehending everything there is to know about existence itself.
For some, like me, this encompasses a particularly grim sense of futility; one that is considerably more demoralizing than in how others seem to react. Some in fact just shrug it all off and seem more than content with embracing what they consider to be all that they need to know in order to propose all manner of completely “thought up” narratives about the “human condition”. There are any number of ILP members who have themselves offered us their own elaborate set of assumptions about the way things are and why and how they got that way. Some through God and some through sheer “philosophical” deduction. No need to mention names but you know the ones.
Of course from my frame of mind there tends to be two things they all share in common:
1] they almost never bring these “worlds of words” down out of their own theoretical clouds bursting at the seams with all manner of “thought up” assumptions
2] none [to my knowledge[ have ever succeeded in demonstrating why all rational [and in some cases virtuous] men and women are obligated to think the same…through a philosophical equivalent of the “scientific method”.
Instead, I construe their efforts as more a psychological contraption aimed at providing them with an intellectual foundation they can attach “I” too in order to attain and then sustain a measure of solace in a world that can often be brutally painful. Like ours todays.
I am not able to go this far myself. There are simply too many things that we can know [and share with others] in regard to the either/or world to make this frame of mind plausible. Do not mathematics, the laws of nature, the empirical world, the rules of language provide us “for all practical purposes” from day to day to day, with all of the standards, foundations and grounds needed such that “knowledge claims” exist that we are readily able to demonstrate as in fact true objectively for all of us?
This begins to crumble for me only in acknowledging at least the possibility of Sim worlds, dream worlds, computer generated realties, or the stuff explored in sci-fi accounts.
Or the possibility of solipsism or determinism.
Why? Because, again, the gap between “I” and a definitive understanding of “all there is” is still very much the reality we all interact in.
But it’s not for nothing that the overwhelming preponderance of us go about the business of living our lives day in and day not at all paralyzed by the thought our interactions cannot “philosophically” be made to correspond with “reality itself”.
Again, in regard to creating and then sustaining meaning, all we can ever really hope for is embedded in our capacity to demonstrate [to the best of our ability] that which we have ourselves come to conclude is true objectively for all of us.
What in particular are we claiming to be true…based on what particular past experiences? Do we have both the argument and the empirical evidence to back up our claim? What actual scientific evidence is being claimed? How might others replicate that claim themselves? What specific words in what specific passage relating to what specific event or occurrence is able to be examined as logical or not logical?
I can only keep going back myself to the gap between whatever experience, science and logic seem to tell us about “I” out in the world, and how all three are fully understood only by going back a complete understanding of existence itself.
Until that day, the meaning [and the breadth] of nihilism can only be explored one context at a time.
The fact that mistakes are made in regard to what something is said to mean seems to indicate that there is in fact a correct meaning. And science comes a hell of a lot closer to that than do ethicists. There are simply things that all of us can know in regard to the natural world and its material laws. What then does it mean to be a nihilist here? Unless, of course, you go all the way out on the limb and probe those things that science is not nearly as certain about. The really big questions for example. But even that doesn’t necessarily lead to the conclusions that some ascribe to nihilism. Meaning is just murkier out there.
But what are the “foundations” available for ethicists that might lead to discovering even broader foundations still? Here, for me, nihilism revolves more around the possibility that in a No God world the first foundation may well be derived from the manner in which I construe the meaning of dasein, conflicting goods and political economy. Here, as in the either/or world, there are facts that revolve around meaning that we all can understand and share. Until different people reacting to the facts come to very different conclusions when it comes concurring in turn about the answer to such questions as, "what does it mean to choose moral behaviors in regard to _________________.
Just fill in the blank with any conflicting goods that matter to you.
In this case it would seem there really isn’t much at all – if anything – that isn’t encompassed epistemologically in nihilism. Aside perhaps from determinism. In a wholly determined universe even knowledge itself – our own or that of some extraterrestrial species – is inherently subsumed in what can only possibly be.
As though any of us can even wrap our heads around that.
But given some measure of human autonomy, we don’t even know all of the things that we don’t even know at all about existence. Or, rather, I don’t.
My own understanding of nihilism then is predicated on the assumption that I do have the capacity to freely speculate about my own knowledge. But only in the context of acknowledging all that I don’t know that can be known. And only insofar as I make this distinction between [b][u]I[/b][/u] the either/or and “i” is the is/ought world.
Sans God, I am not able to grasp how one can know which behaviors are able to be demonstrated as either good or bad. Morally, ethically, politically.
Back again to this distinction:
“Passive nihilism is more the traditional ‘belief that all is meaningless’, while active nihilism goes beyond judgment to deed, and destroys values where they seem apparent. Passive nihilism signifies the end of an era, while active nihilism ushers in something new.”
Of course once again the author leaves out any actual context. Being or not being a “radical skeptic” in regard to what? What alleged knowledge relating to what human interactions in which the “active nihilist” as opposed to the “passive nihilist” would explore nihilism as an epistemologist might? What might the active nihilist come up with as “new” in any subsequent “era”?
Instead, for the pedant…
Got that?
Actually, it is completely over my head. In that I cannot connect these words to anything substantive relating to the life that I actually live.
Can you?
Hell, for all intents and purposes, it could have been written by Satyr.
Until we are able to grasp an understanding of existence itself [which may not even be possible] what does it mean to speak of nihilism epistemologically? After all, in regard to what we either can or cannot know about the totality of reality itself how are we are not always back to this:
There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we know we don’t know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we don’t know we don’t know.
Instead, my own understanding of “moral nihilism” revolves around the distinction I make between objective knowledge derived from interactions in the either/or world and subjective/subjunctive claims of knowledge in the is/ought world. The gap between knowledge that we seem able to demonstrate as applicable to all of us and opinions embedded in our reaction to human interactions in which conflicts occur regarding behaviors deemed to be either right or wrong. The part I root in dasein.
But: As long as there are things in which objective claims of knowledge appear to be exchanged and then sustained year after year after year, where exactly is the line to be drawn between truth and opinion in regard to conflicting goods?
And each of us here is basically in the same leaky boat that has capsized philosophers going back now thousands of year. Boats filled with holes that are unable to be plugged with arguments that settle once and for all what really is the right and the wrong thing to do.
Here instead of there. Now instead of then.
Except of course in any particular philosopher’s head.
First, of course, if a God, the God does in fact exist, then whether your behaviors are ends in themselves or merely a means to immortality and salvation, what difference does it make if on Judgment Day there is an objective font from which to make that crucial distinction? If you behave virtuously on this side of the grave, is God really going to send you to Hell because your virtue was not motivated by/for the right reasons? Besides, one suspects that human motivation here is almost always going to be a complex intertwining of means and ends. You choose morality because you are obligated to, but also because doing the right thing creates and then sustains human interactions able to be construed subjunctively as the best of all possible worlds.
And if you are able to think yourself into believing that your happiness aligns perfectly with virtue how hard is it to conclude further that this a necessary interaction? After all, there are so many rationalizations available to you in order to embody further still the perfect combination of psychological defense mechanisms.
Where to begin! For example, when the reasons that liberals give for choosing progressive behaviors come into fierce conflict with the reasons that conservatives give for choosing their own rendition of that.
And out on the radical left and the radical right end of the political spectrum, reasons also come into conflict. Karl Marx meet Ayn Rand.
And then there’s the “fractured and fragmented” assessments of folks like me.
If this truly were the case would not every Kantian around the globe today be able to synchronize their own moral and political agendas so as to be as one in regard to the most reasonable behaviors that virtuous men and women are obligated to choose?
For example, in this day and age, is it more logical to continue social distancing policies or to open up the economy? Is it more rational to mandate that all citizens be vaccinated against this infection or to make it strictly voluntary?
And, besides, this logic is still no less backed up by a transcending font. The Kantian equivalent of God.
And logic would seem to be inherently tricky given the gap between its use in the either/or world and in the is/ought world. For example, the rules of language made applicable to a description of a prison execution vs. the rules of language made applicable to a discussion of whether capital punishment is, in fact, rationally, “cruel and unusual punishment”.
Then the further leap extrapolating virtue from rationality. If executions are inherently rational, must they then be inherently moral?
And – rationally – should this be made a universal truth regarding all executions or given any number of mitigating and/or aggravating sets of circumstances should rationality be assessed only one execution at a time?
In other words, the subjunctive “I”. That aspect of my “self” in the brain intertwined with complex emotional and psychological states intertwined further in subconscious and unconscious reactions to the world around us intertwined further still in even more deep seated instinctual drives.
Then the parts rooted in ever evolving and changing historical, cultural and experiential memes?
Is it any wonder then that the biological evolution of matter into the self-conscious mind allowed for objectivism? The capacity of “I”, as of now, to just inexplicably “flick a switch” and make all of these convoluted complexities just disappear?
Then the only question is the extent to which it is all nature given a wholly determined universe.
Here, in my view, in regard to meaning in our lives, folks like Nietzsche are just alluding to this:
There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we know we don’t know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we don’t know we don’t know.
The part I take back to the gap between what we think we know about the “human condition” and all there is to know going back to that elusive understanding of existence itself. Where does Kant fit in there?
There is what various philosophers have taught us to think about reason, there is what we have taught ourselves to think about it and there is how that is profoundly, problematically intertwined with “I” as an existential contraption rooted in dasein.
Symbolism, Meaning & Nihilism in Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction
Mark Conard reveals the metaphysical truths lurking under the rug in Tarantino’s cult classic.
Whatever it is one describes Pulp Fiction to be, it is clearly populated by characters that live far, far, far beyond the parameters of what most consider to be a moral universe. Basically these folks are sociopaths. All they ever seem to be concerned with is in satisfying the next itch – for drugs, for money, for sex. It is ever and always me, myself and I. The only hierarchy that seems to exist at all revolves around might makes right.
And, from my point of view, this is the most dangerous manifestation of nihilism. Why? Because, with people like these, the reasoning mind is “for all practical purposes” defunct. And forget about appealing to human decency. Plus, you can’t exactly shame or embarrass or humiliate them into doing the right thing. At least with nihilists who wrap their motivation and intention around an ideological or political agenda – anarchists, say – you can appeal to them with some measure of intelligence and coherent thinking.
But not with these grotesque postmodern caricatures. You get out of their way or you do what they tell you. After all, for them everything revolves solely around not getting caught. By the law. Or by those actually able to exact consequences.
The author then provides a three part summation of the movie plot and his take on the main characters.
This is something that has always intrigued me. The way our “late-capitalist-postmodern-world” has mass produced literally millions upon millions of citizens who seem obsessed only with 1] pop culture 2] consumption and 3] celebrity.
But: It’s almost impossible to link this with nihilism because, well, there it is, everywhere: on TV, in the movies, on records, embedded in virtually every pursuit that the lowest common denominator “masses” are invested in. Even in the midst of a deadly pandemic the “party hardy” “youth culture” crowds are shown trekking to the venues that have come to encompass our me, myself and I pop culture.
In fact, even Pulp Fiction itself becomes just another part of it all. It’s not like most of those who left the theaters back then were bent on discussing the way in which nihilism was explored and depicted in the film.
Instead, when most conjure up cinematic nihilists in their head, they are more inclined towards the characters portrayed in Reservoir Dogs. Truly scary fucking men.
Symbolism, Meaning & Nihilism in Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction
Mark Conard reveals the metaphysical truths lurking under the rug in Tarantino’s cult classic.
Here’s the actual words from the Bible:
“And I will execute great vengeance upon them with furious rebukes; and they shall know that I am the Lord, when I shall lay my vengeance upon them.”
But, really, what’s the difference? The whole point of having words of this sort to fall back on is to justify anything – even killing – in the name of the Lord. And what could possibly serve as a greater antidote to nihilism than that?
After all, as long as you have something to fall back on other than the crass motives of a sociopathic hoodlum, It allows for some measure of sanctity. Whatever is actually unfolding in the mind of Jules Winnfield at the time of each killing, the viewer can always imagine that he has convinced himself there is in fact righteous intent.
But: we know that this is not the case at all. Why? Because Jules himself, personifying the cold-blooded nihilistic psychopath, spills the beans:
“I’ve been saying that shit for years, and if you heard it – that meant your ass. I never gave much thought to what it meant – I just thought it was some cold blooded shit to say to a motherfucker before I popped a cap in his ass."
And if this isn’t construed by most to be what nihilism is all about, there aren’t many other film characters that surpass it. Unless it’s Maynard and Zed. Nothing cannot be rationalized when your point of view revolves entirely around “what’s in it for me”?
Not unlike the mentality that pervades street gangs, outlaw biker clubs and organized crime cliques…the infamous 1% hell bent on taking what they want and dispensing with anyone who gets in their way.
Aren’t they the nihilists that we most fear? The ones that, in today’s world, we are most likely to actually come across. The might makes right factions that can and often do get away with, well, anything that they can. They do unto others whatever suits them. The whole point is in not getting caught. Or, if caught, being able to thump the ones that caught you.
These folks:
I always construed the contents as being anything the viewer most fears about characters of this sort. Their own rendition of being in Room 101 with them.
Symbolism, Meaning & Nihilism in Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction
Mark Conard reveals the metaphysical truths lurking under the rug in Tarantino’s cult classic.
Again, the characters we come across in Pulp Fiction become particularly ominous for most of us.
On the other hand, they are just like us in having acquired value judgments and in ascribing meaning to the things that are important to them in the course of actually living their lives from day to day. It’s just like unlike most of us, these value judgments and this meaning is derived from the fact that for whatever personal reason [rooted in dasein] they have chosen to become sociopaths. And power becomes important here as the font which they can fall back on in determining a hierarchy of behaviors within any particular criminal community. And between “outlaw” communities. It’s just that some sociopathic entities have more rules than others. Organized crime families, street gangs, motorcycle clubs. Some actually have elaborate codes of conducts. Others don’t.
And then those who more or less operate on their own. And who is to say which are the most dangerous if you happen to come in between them and what they want.
And, for many, they have come to encompass nihilism at its most menacing and treacherous.
From my own frame of mind, however, a font is a font is a font. Whether, as a moral narrative, it is a God or a No God rendition, it’s basically providing one with a foundation that, psychologically, one can anchor “I” too. It’s just that with God that anchor continues on into the next world.
And, even with Aristotle, it’s not what he said or believed, but what he was able to demonstrate as being true for all of us. What is the essential reaction that all rational men and women must have in reacting to the characters in Pulp Fiction? I certainly cannot demonstrate that moral nihilism accounts for their existence, but that is because I predicate this on the mere assumption that we live in a No God world.
Bingo! Another “general description intellectual contraption” that crams concepts like “virtue” and “nature” and “essence” and “reason” and “best life” and “highest good” into a world of words. Right? But when the focus is on a particular set of behaviors in a particular context we come at each other from many different conflicting points along the philosophical, moral and political spectrum. Instead, there is only the historical gap between back then in Ancient Greece and right now in our postmodern technocratic world. But surely Aristotle would construe the world created by Tarantino in Pulp Fiction as anything but what he imagined human interactions at their best might be.
It’s Not Nothing: The Nihilism of Seinfeld
Liz Wall
On the other hand, come on, any time nihilism can be reconfigured from its depiction in Pulp Fiction above to a “situation comedy” on network television, how dangerous can it be?
Let’s make a joke out of it? That rendition of it?
Sure, why not.
Okay, for those here who watched the program, cite some examples of this. Note particular episodes where viewers might walk away convinced that right and wrong were merely social constructs that one can take or leave depending on what you have concluded is in it for me.
Here is the author’s example:
Nope, that doesn’t even come close to the manner in which I construe the world around me from a nihilistic perspective. Instead, it sounds exactly like the sort of thing that “pop culture” would come up with if they aimed to portray human existence as an essentially meaningless sojourn to oblivion.
And another:
That ever happen to you? Brutal!
Some do indeed call Seinfeld “the show about nothing”. And nihilism is often associated with it. But it is hardly in the vicinity of what those like me ascribe to a nihilistic frame of mind. Instead it seems to reduce life down to the lowest common denominator human interactions. Plots about almost nothing?
Mainly the episodes seemed to focus in on life’s “minutia” moments. The days crawl by with almost nothing truly eventful happening. So the “smallness” of life itself is blown up all out of proportion in a world where people themselves can seem smaller than life itself.
Of course here we might be expected to presume this goes beyond such things as the Nazis, the Holocaust, the Second World War or any other actual historical events. This is buried deeper in a world that has basically come to reflect human interactions that revolve increasingly around the idea that “in the absence of God all things are permitted”. There is nothing that philosophers can put in His place. So human relationships become increasingly more alienating, estranged, detached from a deeper meaning that allows us to tie everything together into something resembling a teleological foundation.
Even those who have at least managed to accummulate the wherewithal necessary to live princely lives, are no less impaled on all that is down here or out there or up there.
Maybe. Here however the reactions of the characters revolve around the actual reality of extinction. Even if only imagined up on the screen. And it basically ends on an “optimistic” note for the main characters in that they devise a way in which deal with it…through each other.
It is in fact at the beginning of the film when the characters go at each other at the party that the “value of human life” is exposed. Not only in terms of dollars and cents but in the many ways that, in being “human all too human”, we make our lives wretched. And, again, this among those who don’t have to concern themselves with the at times grueling fact of just subsisting from week to week as wage slaves.
Here, in my view, nihilism revolves around oblivion itself. Everyone on Earth is about to be extinguished for all of eternity by the planet Melancholia. But only each of us one by one have to deal with our own extinction. The characters here do not appear to have a belief in God, immortality and salvation. But in a real extinction event those that do will still have that to fall back on, right?
There’s simply no getting around the fact that nihilism itself can be extinguished [on either side of the grave] if one is able to take that existential leap to religion. In their head. And that need be all it is. At least right up to the end. Then for many Pascal’s wager kicks in. They are either gone forever but oblivious to it, or, in fact, their soul carries on in Paradise.
Also, consider that those who do become aware of the collision are but a tiny demographic faction of the human race. There are countless others – both God and No God folks – who might react in any number of different ways. Instead, the assumption [mine] is that this is one possible interpretation attributed to the director.
At the same time, I have myself always been more fascinated in probing nihilism on this side of the grave. The fact that the focus here is more on coming to grips with oblivion, extinction is hardly the manner in which most human beings concern themselves with meaning in their lives. The 70/80 odd years that most of us are around have far more to do with the nearly 30,000 days we have to fill up in the course of living our lives. What if meaning here is essentially just as existential contraption?
This sort of thing revolves around the assumption that in living our lives from day to day we are ever and always preoccupied with meaning and purpose in our lives. Yet, for many of us, challenging the idea that teleologically there is no underlying existential foundation does not make all the things that we choose to do any less satisfying and fulfilling. Does preoccupying oneself with “inherent human defect” make the food we eat taste less delicious, the music we listen to less sublime, the relationships we pursue less rewarding, the careers we sustain less worthwhile.
Here I often come back to that which Woody Allen often comes back to in the face of all the things take make human existence so difficult and painful:
Why is life worth living? It’s a very good question. Um… Well, There are certain things I guess that make it worthwhile. uh… Like what… okay… um… For me, uh… ooh… I would say… what, Groucho Marx, to name one thing… uh… um… and Willie Mays… and um… the 2nd movement of the Jupiter Symphony… and um… Louis Armstrong, recording of Potato Head Blues… um… Swedish movies, naturally… Sentimental Education by Flaubert… uh… Marlon Brando, Frank Sinatra… um… those incredible Apples and Pears by Cezanne… uh… the crabs at Sam Wo’s… uh… Tracy’s face…
Try even to imagine all the different reactions there are from all the different people reading his words. Sure, if your philosophy is bleak and the circumstances you endure from day to day are just as bleak [with no end in sight], you might be sync with this interpretation of Melancholia.
Melancholia
Stefan Bolea takes us on a tour of European nihilism.
Yes, in my own way, with my own “story” articulated through a unique set of assumptions derived from the components of my own rendition of nihilism – dasein, conflicting goods and political economy – that is basically how it “works” for me too.
Once you have thought yourself into accepting a fractured and fragmented “I” in regard to human interactions, it really doesn’t make any difference how you put the either/or world together. All the science and logic and objective reality in the world doesn’t make the part about an essentially meaningless existence ending in oblivion go away.
It’s only a matter then of finding a way not think that is true or in finding others that you can at least share the disintegration with.
Or sinking down [as “I” do] in “distractions”.
What is this though but a frame of mind that can only be understood with any degree of comprehension by Justine. Here she is a fictional character in a book facing a set of circumstances that are in turn entirely made up. There is no planet out there about to crash into our own wiping us all out. But there are of course any number of very real contexts in which one is confronted with imminent death. And do we or do we not have to accept that we may or may not be able to convey our thoughts and feelings about it to others? That others may confront us for not thinking and feeling as they do? That arguments may erupt over how one ought to think and feel?
Here, nihilism can either perturb you all the more or in fact actually soothe you.
Melancholia
Stefan Bolea takes us on a tour of European nihilism.
And this is a frame of mind that, perhaps, any number of nihilists have entertained. I know that I have. And for me it flows from the assumption that human existence is an essentially meaningless sojourn to oblivion. Why not go all the way out on the cynical limb and imagine the worst. After all, it’s no less entangled in the assumption itself.
And, from my frame of mind, the cynicism and sarcasm reflect but another psychological defense mechanism, however twisted. The consolation being that “I” have figured this all out while others live on in their delusions of morality and immortality.
Others have their own “intellectual contraptions”. This one:
Or this one:
The bottom line being that any particular reaction to events portrayed in the film are going to be subsumed in dasein. And here you can only communicate to others what you think and feel up to a point. After all, unless someone has lived your life, what can they possibly know about what you think and feel when confronting extinction. There are only those who come closer to the experiences that you have had.
Still, my point is that, at this juncture, even we ourselves are only able to grasp our lives existentially–subjectively, subjunctively. There are simply too many variables [going back to the cradle] that were/are/will be either beyond our control or our understanding.
Woody Allen, Nihilist
By Matthew Boudway at Commonweal website
Let’s face it, if one is convinced there is no essential meaning able to be ascribed to human interactions, nor any font onto/into which one can anchor an objective morality, then why can’t the sexual abuse of children be rationalized? If, in the absence of God all things are permitted, then nothing is really out of the question. Instead, your focus shifts from “is this the right thing to do” to “will I be caught if I do it”. You may rationalize any behavior but you still live among those who do not.
Me? Well, I’m as ambiguous in regard to this as I am in regard to all other issues relating to value judgments and identity at the juncture of any particular political economy.
Others of course will then ask: “Wait, are you saying that abusing children sexually is neither right nor wrong, but embodied subjectively in whatever predisposition any particular individual happens to accept here and now?”
Well, yeah. My own moral philosophy revolves around the assumption – another existential contraption – that in a no God world, there does not appear to be an a demonstrable argument from either science or philosophy that is able to establish beyond all doubt what all rational men and women are obligated to believe in regard to human sexuality. Or, if there is one, I haven’t come across it yet. Or, yeah, I have come across it but am not intellectually sophisticated enough to understand it.
I certainly don’t deny that possibility.
And then there are those among us who take a leap of faith as sociopaths, solely to whatever furthers their own selfish wants and needs. And, sans God, where’s the rebuttal to that?
So, given these assumptions, it’s not that there is no justice, but that justice itself in a No God world would appear to be no less an existential contraption rooted in dasein.
Woody Allen, Nihilist
By Matthew Boudway at Commonweal website
Probably. But what are the “convictions and insights” of the author in regard to a moral context in which the deontologists themselves come down on opposite ends of the political spectrum?
That’s the part I always point to. Say that you are one of those philosophers [from Aristotle to Ayn Rand] who champions one or another rendition of moral objectivism [derived from God to Reason] but you bump into other philosophers who, while sharing this conviction, insist that your value judgments are the wrong ones. You both agree that philosophers can determine the optimal or the only rational moral agenda in prescribing [rewarding] and proscribing [punishing] behaviors in regard to any particular conflicting good, but only your own value judgments are examples of this.
And you know where I’ll take this: to “I” as an existential contraption rooted in dasein. And what of the sociopaths who rationalize predatory sexual behavior because for them morality revolves solely around sustaining their own wants and needs. Where is the philosophical argument able to demonstrate that this is – necessarily – irrational? In a No God world.
I’m not suggesting that the argument doesn’t exist, only that [here and now] I am not myself cognizant of it.
Indeed. And my argument here is that the moral objectivists recoil from this because it prompts them to examine their own value judgments and behaviors as “existential contraptions rooted in dasein” rooted in a particular world historically, culturally and circumstantially. And a “softer” or “harder” frame of mind is, to me, just another manifestation of “I” as constructed, deconstructed and reconstructed along a particular path embodied in a particular life.
Though, sure, if others are able to to offer up alternative moral narratives and political agenda, by all means, let them.
But: Just because my own frame of mind here is disturbing [to some] doesn’t make it wrong.
